t but quite possibly a short cut to misery for family members when their budding pilot tries that at say, 500' on the approach after experiencing an engine failure
My point is that if you don't sink when one foot above the runway, you won't sink at 500 feet, as long as you increase the AOA. Even if you fail to do so, you won't sink 500 feet. The sink is brief, until the aircraft's natural stability will ensure that lift = weight. You're probably most vulnerable at 20 feet, more than 500.
Do you raise flap all in one go on a go-around? No. Or... at least I hope not!
Not intentionally, but I have had students do that inadvertantly.
You get a bit of a sink, but it's not a huge problem, as long as the go-around is otherwise properly performed. (Most pilots fail to lift the nose during a go-around.)
Far better to lower full flap when you know yer can make the runway.
No, I disagree. Doing so tends to destabilize the approach at the very end, just when the greatest amount of precision is needed. Besides, that last notch of flaps is the easiest to remove.
I'm teaching them understanding, rather than the rote memorization of "Never raise the flaps to extend the glide", which is wrong and dangerous, and demonstrates a misunderstanding of what flaps do.
That said, robotic behavior is a positive in many ways, as demonstrated by the safety of the airline training programs. Teaching what many call "piloting" is the absence of rules and structure, allowing the pilot to make decisions in real time when he doesn't really have any understanding of the physics involved. Hence, I teach full flaps for all approaches, removing the distraction of that decision-making from the equation.